Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Three makes a collection!

Pretty bad timing for this acquisition (see: house torn UP!), but once again, my good friend Colleen came through with a sweet-ass score for me; my latest rain lamp.

I was at lunch when I got this MMS with the message, "At estate sale, $15, you want?" I said HELL YES without asking any more questions. I could barely see any detail on my iPhone, and from what I could see it looked pretty rough, but for that price, I decided it was worth the risk.

A couple of days later, I got it from her, and was a little surprised. The pagoda top is plastic, as well as the base, which was disappointing but not too shocking; it's clearly a late-model cheap knockoff. (Which at least makes it much lighter-weight than my other two.) More of a surprise – and delight – however is the goddess. She's transparent. !! This, I had never seen!

As soon as I got her home, I filled the base and plugged her in. There are two lights; one under the pagoda and one – you guessed it – under the transparent goddess herself. And they are switched separately.

The lights both work, but unfortunately, there was no pump action. Not so much as a hum.

Since I'd ultimately wind up taking the thing apart anyway, to make sure that nothing internal was gummed up, I set to unscrewing bits and bobs to take a gander at the pump assembly. This is when I was presented with a couple more surprises.

For one thing, the pump isn't just a pump; it's a small motor assembly, running a couple of gears. Oh yes, to my absolute horror, the transparent goddess, she... she rotates. Or would, in an ideal world.

What I found next mitigated the pointlessness of the revolving goddess. Between the lower bulb and the underside of the goddess base was a tiny little color wheel. Oh come ON!

Now I have GOT to get this thing working. I mean, it's like the tackiest possible version of an already tacky object! It's also the first one I've gotten that I haven't immediately been able to get working, so my inner MacGyver is all riled up, wanting to safety-pin-and-electrical-tape something together.

Plus, this is my third rain lamp, which officially makes me a collector.* And let me tell ya, I don't collect junk.

*A well-established fact. Ask anyone you know. This number was originally given to me when I asked a half-dozen people "how many animal skulls in my living room before it's a 'collection'?"**

**Okay, to be fair, a couple people answered, "Too many. However many you have, it's too many."